Few "comeback" albums have been as loaded with expectation as Celtic Frost's Monotheist, which is the first new album from Frost since 1989's

Vanity/Nemesis. How were these guys going to follow up their oft-maligned late 80's period, where their flirtations with Goth and pop metal

alienated pretty much their entire audience? Well, it's a surprising return to the sort of avant-garde Metal progression that Celtic Frost pioneered with

Into The Pandemonium; while obviously not as groundbreaking as that album, Monotheist is still an adventurous, haunting follow-up to

Pandemonium, a descent into grim, doomy experimental Metal that incorporates 80's Goth Rock, Industrial, doom-drone, classical, and New Wave

elements into their crushingly heavy Death/Black/Thrash assault, with repetitive, dirgey rhythms that make up much of the music hints at a Godflesh

influence. But along with all of the awesome experimental flourishes on this album, Frost's trademark crusty, detuned guitars and Tom Fischer's death grunts

are totally intact.

The album kicks off with "Progeny"'s avalanche of double-bass thrash destruction, beyond heavy and demonic, brutal guitar tones turning the air to rust, as

the song slows to a mournful doom metal crawl, cold electronics surface in the background adding an ashen atmosphere that persists throughout the rest of the

disc. This is followed by the inexorable pound of "Ground", a tranced out death sludge mantra with cool vocal layering effects and an undeniable sing-along

chorus. The atmospheric "A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh" features a gloomy, hushed spoken-sung lament over textured guitar melodies that erupts into an

ominous eruption of molten Doom. "Drown in Ashes" matches beautiful female singing with Fischer's clean vocals that remind me a lot of Peter Murphy of

Bauhaus, over what could only be described as a hybrid of gothy post-punk and psychedelic doom metal. "Os Abysmi Vel Daath" starts off with a clanging Metal

ambience that could be mistaken for the lead-in to a Jesu song, until a crushing doom metal riff emerges with FIscher's dramatic Bauhaus croon layered with

distant operatic female wailing, then disappears into a black void of ambient electronics and crackling guitar distortion before reemerging as a spaced out

blast of cavernous thrash. "Obscured" opens with tracers of feedback drone over heavy drumming, then turns into a massively heavy combo of Frostian doom,

prog rock-informed guitar passages, and Sisters Of Mercy style apocalyptic gloom rock with a melodic chorus that kills. "Domain of Decay" is another

megaheavy Sabbathian sludge feast, with slightly more complex riffing and menacing, strained vocals, with an awesomely deranged guitar solo surfacing towards

the end. "Ain Elohim" is a much faster number, with speedy double-bass blasts and awesome thrashy riffs, spliced with bursts of crackling, crumbling

amplifier drone and ending in a mangled heap of freeform guitar noise. Monotheist closes out with the three-part "Triptych": "Triptych: Totengott"

unleashes distant percussive blasts buried in a fog of droning, blackened synthesizer ambience and sickeningly evil Black Metal screams bathed in distortion,

forming a rich psychedelic soundfield of bleak drone; "Triptych: Synagoga Satanae" delivers one of the heaviest freaking riffs on the entire album, a

crushing doom-dirge that ends on heavy feedback with creeped out, Teutonic mutterings, before closing out with the frozen, classical strains of "Triptych:

Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale)".

I think this is one of the best things Celtic Frost has ever recorded, gloriously weird, progressive, catchy, and U L T R A heavy, totally in the spirit of

Frost's experimental Metal spirit of the 1980's but adventurous and totally contemporary, an apocalyptic mix of doom, thrash, goth rock/post punk, drone,

classical music, and prog, all filtered through Frost's monstrous heaviness. Highly highly recommended !!!!!